


drop a line to say you're feeling fine

by nice_girls_play



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Apologies, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Red Room, are always best delivered in person, egregious speculation on character backstories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:32:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7381969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark moves house to regroup and finds an old friend waiting for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drop a line to say you're feeling fine

Natasha's hair is longer when Tony sees her again. 

Not unusual, he reasons. It’s been almost four months. More unusual is the fact that, when he finally does see her, she's sitting in his living room – back against a Queen Anne chair, booted feet resting on a leather ottoman that’s older than Tony -- drinking coffee from a paper cup.

Not the compound, not the house in Malibu -- the house in Manhattan, half a block away from where the sky opened up four years earlier. In the shadow of his son’s tower, Howard Stark's old stomping grounds had narrowly missed being leveled in a cascade of fire. 

The house hasn’t been lived in for more than twenty years, hasn’t even seen people in at least five. It lacks the amenities of the other places and the loving touch of Tony’s machines and AI. It’s also closer to Queens and Hell's Kitchen, close to a few key contacts he can slip new tech, discreet armor, and -- if it comes to it with Luke and/or Jessica, bail money -- as needed. 

Howard passed on one useful legacy to Tony late in life -- if someone knows where you are, it’s probably time to move house. One unexpected delivery from a frazzled Fed Ex employee is all the warning Tony needs.

He’s played with the idea for a while anyway. Rhodey’s making good progress with his physical therapy and he has the biometric harness more or less mastered. Vision, initially idle, is more involved in the daily routines and his interactions with Rhodey, while not a replacement for the rag tag group of veterans, SHIELD cast-offs, HYDRA volunteers, and Norse gods cycling in and out, are good. They can get along without him for a bit. Maybe Thor and Bruce will turn up. Maybe they won’t. And, if any other suspicious parcels arrive, they can always move house, too. 

His workshops from both places are boxed up and en route to the house, due to arrive in the morning. He arranged for them to be delivered in Stark Industries vehicles rather than risk any of them being waylaid by UPS or FedEx, either by accident or on purpose. As an added precaution, he surprised the crew with the order to box everything up at the beginning of the shift that day. He left FRIDAY running at both locations, maintaining security and comfort for what’s left of his team, as well as access to his files and intelligence from their most recent projects, in case things happen to go south with his new contacts (picturing Rhodey as a mentor or protective figure for Peter is easy and, for Tony, awash in a warm glow of nostalgia).

He recognizes that this is a cosmetic change at best -- unlike Bruce, Thor, and the handful of people Ross has been screaming into his phone about for the past three days (of which one is currently scuffing his ottoman with what he suspects might be west coast sagebrush and sand), the level to which he is exposed is never in doubt. He has three well-known addresses and one that is less visible but still known to anyone who does a basic scan of his property taxes. Anyone who might want to know where he is can find him. 

They won't like what they find, but they can find him.

He'd taken a first class seat on a commercial flight instead of the private jet and rented a car to drive himself to the house. Ross and the UN have eyes on him and TMZ hasn't given up attempting to document his misery. Disappearing in one of his own cars for an impromptu cross-country road trip would only have raised more suspicions and given someone ammunition for a committee hearing or, when he inevitably surfaced, a subpoena. High profile is the low key option at this point, and -- just as planned -- news of his arrival spread long before the plane descended. He smiled for the reporters and the handful of FBI agents in bad (and, frankly, hideous) reporter drag, played up his desire to give back to the city that saw the Avengers’ first mission, his recent projects that take him closer to the east coast, and folksy "there's no place like home" platitudes. 

He'd also made a point of leaving his phone off, allowing the calls from Rhodey, T'Challa and everyone else to fall into the ether of his unchecked voicemail. All of the breadcrumbs he left behind (forwarding information at Stark Industries, credit card trails, utility contracts, traffic cam routes) indicate he's staying at the Four Seasons, pending relocation to his old place in Stark Tower… 

Someone apparently knows him better than that. 

Natasha stirs in the chair, dropping another bit of desert ash onto the leather, eyes on a distant point close to Tony’s head as she takes another sip from her cup. He drops his keys in the ceramic bowl by the door, barely noticing the layer of dust it displaces. 

"Make yourself at home, Natasha. Apparently, any place I pay to keep the lights on is fair game for you people,” he locks the door behind him.  


“I was under the impression this place was off the grid,” her voice is cool and even as it breaks the silence of the room, in an off-road question worthy of Peter. 

“The Tower is off the grid. The mansion gets its electricity from Con-Ed just like everyone else. For the moment,” he moves past her, dropping his heavier bag in the hall on his way toward the kitchen. The kitchen is bare -- no table and chairs, no appliances littering the counters -- apart from the island with the built in sink and a mounted espresso machine. Priorities. He pushes a button on the machine just to see if the power lights up. It gives a little hum as the red power light blinks twice, then stays on. He strokes the side panel, nightmares of caffeine headaches a thing of the past. 

Natasha lingers in his peripheral vision, leaning against the door frame and watching his movements. 

“I’m sure it’s been a long day for you, too. Say what you came here to say.” 

He halts at adding ‘then get out.’ That’s a fight he won’t win, suit or no suit. And it really doesn't matter what Natasha has to say. In the past few months, he's heard just about everything. 

"You were six years old when I met you for the first time," she says.

Okay, that's new. He turns to look at her -- the slope of her shoulders, arms folded but not in challenge -- taking in her solemn features as though seeing them for the first time. 

"Erskine's serum?"

"A variation. Minor-to-moderate improvements to my reflexes, healing, and longevity, but normal metabolism. Same as Director Fury."

"And here I thought 'KGB' was just less of a mouthful than 'SVR RF.'” He lifts his glasses, examining her face skeptically. “Nice work. Not as nice as his. Anyone else?"  


Silence.

"Does that mean it’s classified? Or don’t you know? Or are you just peeved and don’t want to tell me?"

"On paper, it was a recon mission,” she says and Tony knows that the subject is off the table. “In the days before security cameras, gathering intelligence often called for more up-close observation. A press pass and a smile went a long way."

“Still does. I don’t remember you.” He unzips his messenger bag and focuses on unloading the contents: in-flight magazine from the plane, file folders (decoys), tablet (password protected), blister pack of Dramamine, Xanax and Valium secreted in a Tylenol bottle, phone...

"You wouldn’t. You had a lot of reporters visiting you back then,” she shrugs. “You had just built your first V8 engine and were working on your first motorcycle using the Harley Davidson WLA Liberator Army bike as a model. You were protective of the work area where the bike was being built, so we sat in the studio and you showed me the blue prints instead."

Captain America's motorbike. He remembered that. It had been one of the few projects Howard was willing to take precious time out of the day to work on with him -- everything from drafting the blue prints to shopping for parts to assembly. Howard Stark with his sleeves rolled up and a torq wrench in his hand was a rare sight in those days.

“We looked at the drafts for your first circuit board as well. You told me about the etching process for the board and how you weren't allowed to do it yourself because it involved muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide. You were very indignant about that last part."

Damn right he was. The repeated assertions that protective lab gear (coat, gloves, eye-wear) didn't come in his size hadn't fazed him. He'd even gotten one of the assistants to attach an extension to the cord for the lab's emergency chemical shower, so he could at least have the pretense of spending more time in the work space and being able to rescue himself in the event of someone else's error. He resented asking someone else to hold the soldering iron that was three times the size of his own hand while he directed them on how to use it. Looking back, he was pretty sure they'd resented it as well. 

"I wasn’t usually slated for recon missions,” she pauses, as if weighing what she’s about to say. “My… _area_ was assassinations. I had a handler who would watch my progress and signal me during the mission, usually through an open window nearby. If we were near a parking garage, it would be a flash of headlights. If it was a residence or an office building, it was a shade being drawn. The room I interviewed you in was on the 10th floor across from a hotel. I held you on my lap and watched the window.”

Watched the window... for the signal to snap a six-year-old boy’s neck. She has Tony’s full attention now. He lays his phone on the counter and meets her eyes – cool as ever, even with dark circles and frown lines. 

“I was with you for less than an hour when Jarvis spotted me. He made sure that I was ushered out quietly and quickly. He told me the only reason he was letting me go was that the building I’d been monitoring was empty and I hadn't made a move to grab you or hurt you. If I tried to come back or if there were any attempts to harm you, he said he would kill me himself."

Jarvis. The man, not the AI he had built to replace the man. His heart stops for a moment as he imagines the amiable, grey-haired man he’d known his whole life threatening Natasha… it didn’t quite compute. But she rarely lied when she couldn’t omit. 

And it explained why he'd been sent to boarding school shortly after, far away from anyone who could use him as leverage against his father, or Stark Industries. Or SHIELD. All the little details and unanswered questions he'd had about those years fallen into place. He wasn't sure this was better than decades he lived without them.  


Whether Natasha can see that in his face, Tony doesn't know. Either way, she moves to stand across from him at the kitchen island, setting her cup down between them. 

"The next time I saw you was at the gym thirty years later. I was with Steve when he found the HYDRA files and I knew that they arranged the accident that killed your parents. Now you know everything that I hadn't already told you. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you earlier."

Full disclosure. Apology without excuses or justification. It's almost refreshing, compared with everything else he's gotten lately. And yet, the fact that she knows specifically what she needs to disclose tells him exactly where she was before she landed at the west coast. Anticipating a trip to the compound. Too late. 

"People are always sorry once they've been caught." Tony’s hand stills as he re-zips his bag and sets it flat on the table. "Are you sorry for me or are you just sorry that I found out?" 

"For you," she says, an edge to her voice that reminds him of his first MIT tutor – a second-year grad student, easily aggravated and perpetually under-slept with long pink hair and nails bitten down to her elbows, who had a habit of punctuating each sentence with 'you little shit.' 

“You showed up at my father’s house four months after you last saw me just to tell me that?” he asks, because, just like with Delia, he can’t resist pushing buttons until the other person throws their hands up in aggravation.

Natasha doesn't look aggravated. She looks tired.

"What I just told you took years of SHIELD-sponsored de-programming and psych work to root out. The Red Room's specialty was in weaving false memories in with real ones. "

He believes that. Of course, with so many HYDRA agents in deep cover at SHIELD, it was no wonder they'd been able to peel back the damage -- the fascists had essentially lifted their torture playlist from Stalin's greatest hits, after all. For all they knew, the agent who had helped to descale the phantoms in Natasha's head had been their number one fanboy, working from cribbed notes, possibly delaying his own progress just to give his neo-Nazi homeboys inside another small edge over Fury’s crew.

Tony shakes his head. He’s beginning to see why Steve had become so paranoid.

He wonders if Natasha knows herself, if she found their names in those encrypted files and was able to match them up with the many faces in her head. Thanks to whatever diluted super-soldier serum she'd been slipped, she had decades of experience to reflect on and the acumen to pick them apart. More than any of them had, including Steve.

"You read those files," he takes her cup from the counter, stealing a sip from the dregs of what was once very good coffee. Cold, no milk, slightly bitter Italian roast. "You were the one in charge of the info-dump."

"Files written and encrypted by the same people who got my date of birth wrong,” she reaches to steal her cup back, knocking back the last swallow and setting it on the table. “I’m not going to pretend I was behaving altruistically, Tony -- I crossed my fingers and hoped it was misinformation."

"It wasn't." He's still having nightmares over how wrong they'd been but he will stick his hand in the garbage disposal that might not work before he tells her that. 

She may have guessed anyway.

"I know," she says, voice soft. Not the first time her hope has been misplaced. And, Tony thinks, with the kind of luck they seem to have both collectively and as individuals, it won't be the last.

He’s read the accident report a dozen times since Siberia. Howard died from a blow to the head (“steering wheel”, the on-site pathologist had noted in hurried red pen), Maria from strangulation (“seat belt”). Public information, general law enforcement archives, easy to get but recorded each time the file was pulled… and the activity logs from two years ago were mysteriously missing – leaving a yawning gap between 2013 when a reporter had requested them for an article on Maria and Howard's relationship, and 2016, when Tony had submitted his request. 

It didn’t take a genius (or an electrical engineer in need of distraction) to know who had the knowledge base to access those records and leave no trace, absent of SHIELD’s authority and resources. 

Natasha had read the report. Natasha, who once, after four large scotches, confessed to knowing fifty ways to kill someone with a paperclip and held him on her lap, poised to kill him, when he was a first-grader. She knew a lot. She’d seen... and she’d crossed her fingers. Not for Steve's sake or for Barnes, for his. 

Tony swallows, tamping down the urge to stare at everything in the room and make an assessment on what needs painting, what needs refitting, fingers itching to grab a pencil and draw up a schematic. Houses can be rebuilt. People can't.

And if someone knows where you are, it’s time to move house…

"I haven't been to this house in almost five years,” he finally says. “There is nothing in the refrigerator or the deep freeze. I may have forgotten to have the plumbing checked so a pipe may burst when you turn the water on -- if you want to roll those dice, that's up to you. You can stay the night. If you're not gone by the morning, we are going to have a problem."

"I've already eaten. And showered," she answers, impassive. "If you need me gone, I can be gone right now."

"Bullshit. You haven't slept. You said normal metabolism so, presumably, that means you need sleep. You can have the bedroom with the least amount of dust mites. Don't say I don't know how to accept an apology."

It’s funny -- he never used to. If someone, he thought, was dumb enough to hurt his feelings, that was a fault, not a mistake. And a sign that that person would be trouble if they decided to stick around. Rhodey had gone a long way towards changing his mind on that. Rhodey, then Pepper, then…

Bad example. 

"Is there someone I need to watch to avoid when I leave in the morning?" she asks.

"Movers. And possibly paparazzi. I took a United flight instead of the jet."

"How was that?"

"We didn't get shot out of the sky -- that's about the nicest thing I can say about it. Also, when you go, do me a favor and don't leave a number where you can be reached."

"I won't," she says. 

Tony can't tell if that answer means she won't leave a point of contact because she's going to be out of his life for good, or because she intends to be within screaming distance when the heat's on. 

After the four months he's had, either option seems too good to hope for.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the lyrics to "I'll Be Around" by the Mills Brothers. Natasha's backstory here has very little grounding in comics canon, apart from the backdating of the timeline, but I didn't think Tony's "old soul" comment when they met in Iron Man 2 or her continuous references to the KGB (a government organization that was officially dissolved in 1991, seven years after the HYDRA files state she was born) were a mistake. This may need another edit. Any feedback or notes are appreciated!


End file.
